Iran wants talks in Turkey on nuclear program AMMAN...

November 08, 2010

Iran wants talks in Turkey on nuclear program AMMAN, Jordan (LAT) -- Iran agreed to talks with the United States and other world powers on the Islamic Republic's nuclear program, provided negotiations take place in neighboring Turkey, officials said Sunday. The offer likely was meant to put diplomatic pressure on the U.S. and its allies. There was no word on whether the U.S. or other world powers approved of the proposal. European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton had previously proposed Vienna, home to the International Atomic Energy Agency and many diplomats familiar with the Iranian nuclear program, as the venue for talks. But Turkey's semiofficial Anatolia news agency quoted Foreign Ministry officials as saying "parties had agreed in principle to hold the talks in Turkey," though no date or specific site has been set. "We told our friends in Turkey two or three days ago that we have agreed to meet with five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany in Turkey," Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said in Tehran on Sunday, according to local news agencies. German riot police clash with anti-nuclear protesters DANNENBERG, Germany (AP) -- Activists rappelled down from a high bridge, broke through police lines and chained themselves to German train tracks Sunday, trying to halt a shipment of nuclear waste as they protested Chancellor Angela Merkel's plans to keep using nuclear energy. The train, which set off Friday from a reprocessing plant in France, slowly headed toward the northern town of Dannenberg, where containers carrying 123 tons of reprocessed nuclear waste were to be loaded onto trucks for the final leg of their journey to a disputed storage site at Gorleben. Riot police tried to stop up to 4,000 protesters making their way through the woods onto the tracks near Dannenberg ahead of the nuclear waste train. Police used water cannons and pepper spray and wrestled with activists to break up the protest, but some still reached the rail line. Some protesters poured flammable liquid on a police vehicle and set it alight. Anti-nuclear protests have gained new momentum from Merkel's decision to extend the life of Germany's 17 atomic power plants by an average of 12 years. Merkel says the move is necessary to keep energy cheap and readily available as Germany works to ramp up its renewable energy sources. Critics call the nuclear plan a windfall for Germany's biggest energy companies. Slim hope for change in first Myanmar vote since 1990 YANGON, Myanmar (AP) -- Voters in the secretive military-ruled nation of Myanmar cast their first ballots in two decades on Sunday, as slim hopes for democratic reform faced an electoral system engineered to ensure that most power will remain in the hands of the junta and its political proxies. There was little doubt that the junta-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party would emerge with an enormous share of the parliamentary seats, despite widespread popular opposition to 48 years of military rule. It fielded 1,112 candidates for the 1,159 seats in the two-house national parliament and 14 regional parliaments, while the largest anti-government party, the National Democratic Force, contested just 164 spots. Detained Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, whose party won a landslide victory in the last elections in 1990 but was barred from taking office, urged a boycott of the vote. Hundreds of potential opposition candidates were either in prison or, like Suu Kyi, under house arrest. The military has ruled Myanmar since 1962, when it was known as Burma. Decades of human rights abuses and mistreatment of its ethnic minorities have turned the Southeast Asian nation into a diplomatic outcast.